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Toshiba's Status and Measures in Response to the Great East Japan Earthquake (As of April 18)

18 Apr, 2011

We offer our deepest condolences to all the victims of the earthquake and tsunami and our sympathy to all those who continue to suffer its aftereffects and strive to rebuild their lives.

Toshiba Corporation would like to provide an update of our current status and the measures taken in response to the Great East Japan Earthquake, as of April 18.

1. Assistance activity

Toshiba Group initially decided to make a donation equivalent to 500 million yen, immediately after the earthquake, in order to contribute to relief and recovery efforts in the aftermath of the disaster. Toshiba Group has now decided to donate an additional 500 million yen, raising the total donation to 1 billion yen.

To date, Toshiba Group has donated relief supplies, including food, daily necessities, electric home appliances and small-sized ultrasound diagnostic systems to be used to diagnose deep-vein thrombosis (economy class syndrome). The Group has also donated residential photovoltaic power generation systems and energy-efficient home appliances for 100 units of temporary and newly constructed public housing that the government will provide for victims.

In addition, Toshiba Group is considering how best to cooperate in efforts to create jobs and secure the resumption of work efforts in devastated areas. Measures under consideration include providing fishing boats to fishery cooperatives in tsunami devastated areas, to support fishermen who lost boats in resuming fishing. Toshiba is also considering supporting owners of electrical appliance stores who lost their shops or assets by lending replacement vehicles for use in sales and maintenance activities, by offering places to do business instead of their own shops, and by dispatching support people to assist shop owners in their business activities. Toshiba Group will also cooperate in promoting job creation in the devastated region through measures such as enhancing its Tohoku region call-center.

2. Status of the Toshiba Group Employees in Japan

As of April 15, the safety of all but one of 74,104 Group employees living in the Tohoku and Kanto regions has been confirmed. Toshiba Group continues to make efforts to confirm the safety of the unaccounted for employee.

3. Situation at production facilities (excluding offices and sales branches)

The status of major Group companies which are now in the process of recovering operations is as follows.

Toshiba Mobile Display Co., Ltd. (Fukaya City, Saitama Pref.), a wholly-owned subsidiary and manufacturer of medium- and small-sized LCD displays, started partial production at its manufacturing line in Fukaya on March 28 and will resume full operation by the end of April. The company is supplying some products from Ishikawa Works, the company's other production facility in Ishikawa Prefecture.

4. Measures to reduce electricity consumption

Toshiba Group is implementing measures to reduce electricity consumption at its business premises and production facilities. Summertime measures at facilities supplied by Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) are as follows.

1)Toshiba Group’s Summer holidays and working hoursIn order to reduce electricity consumption by Toshiba Group as a whole, in accordance with government’s policy, Toshiba plans a system of rolling summer holidays during the period from June-mid to September end. Week-long blocks, either continuous or spread out over the summer, will be defined and major facilities divided into several groups and assigned to a specific week or weeks. This will create a structure allowing group of facilities to close for longer summer holidays, in turn.

Longer summer holidays will be secured by working on Saturdays and holidays in other seasons. In addition to this, we are also considering a summertime move of making Saturday a working day in place of a weekday working day as a means to reduce electricity consumption on mid-summer weekdays.

If the above holiday plan proves insufficient in reducing electricity consumption, we will consider implementing early starting times in factories.

2) Individual measures at each facilityIn line with the aforementioned holidays and time-shift measures, Toshiba will shift part of production to nighttime and to national holidays, to achieve electric-load leveling within production facilities. The company is also considering temporarily moving some production equipment and/or servers to sites outside areas served by TEPCO and Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc., allowing some design and development people to work at home or to shift their workplace to Toshiba’s facilities in western Japan.

While maintaining a safe working environment, each facility will implement such measures as removing some lighting, changing temperature settings and the operating hours of air-conditioning, and utilizing and enhancing in-house power generation systems to reduce electricity consumption at peak power demand times.

5. Toshiba’s support in securing the integrity of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations

Immediately after the earthquake, Toshiba Group formed a special task force at its headquarters in Tokyo and at its Isogo Nuclear Engineering Center in Yokohama, in order to help maintain the integrity of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations. This team is gathering and analyzing information 24/7 and developing solutions.

Following requests from the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Co, Ltd. (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima power plants, Toshiba has dispatched engineers to TEPCO’s head office and to Fukushima Daiichi and Daini Nuclear Power Plants to provide vital technical support and to work with other companies to develop solutions. Toshiba has also dispatched engineers to Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc.’s Onagawa Nuclear Power Stations to cooperate with staff there.

At the moment, as a result of collaboration with Westinghouse Electric Company, The Shaw Group, Toshiba's ABWR plant partner and an expert in nuclear, environmental and natural disaster response services, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, a leading U.S. provider of a broad range of power technologies and services, and Exelon Nuclear Partners (ENP), a division of Exelon Generation Company, LLC, operator of the largest number of nuclear power plants in the United States, about 1,400 engineers are working to deal with the accident. A total of 600 Toshiba employees have worked at the Fukushima sites, and an average of over 190 employees are at work at the site everyday, on a rotating basis.

In parallel with its efforts to help to secure the integrity of the Fukushima nuclear power plants, Toshiba has provided 45 audible alarm pocket-sized dosimeters, five electric motors for cooling water pump, 2,000 batteries, 150 submersible pumps, transformers, distribution switchboards, power cables and other items of equipment to TEPCO. Through Toshiba, the Babcock & Wilcox Company has provided TEPCO with 744 waterproof work suits, used in chemical plants and other facilities, which can be worn over radiation protection suits, and Westinghouse Electric Company has provided military-use unmanned helicopters and management services for monitoring fuel pools.

At TEPCO’s request, Toshiba, on April 4, in cooperation with Westinghouse Electric Company, The Shaw Group and The Babcock & Wilcox Company, submitted a draft proposal for short-term action plans for maintaining safety and a mid- to long-term management plan for fuel extraction, debris removal, disposal of radioactive waste and environmental monitoring. Toshiba also submitted an updated, comprehensive management plan containing Exelon’s findings on April 12.

Again at TEPCO’s request, Toshiba is coordinating a plan for a treatment system for handling the radioactive water that has built up in the basement of the turbine building and in maintenance pits in the plants. This will be implement upon the arrival of water treatment equipment from Areva, the French nuclear power company, and US-based Kurion, a technology development company providing proprietary solutions for nuclear waste remediation.

6. Support activities with a view to resolving the power supply shortage in the Tohoku and Kanto Regions

As the Japanese government and electric power companies are striving for an early end to power shortages in the Tohoku and Kanto regions, Toshiba Group has formed a task force of some 220 employees at Toshiba Corporation's headquarters. The task force will extend full support to efforts to recover or enhance thermal power capacity and to restore transmission and distribution networks.

The team is making utmost efforts to support TEPCO and Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc. projects for the recovery of damaged thermal power plants and devastated power transmission and distribution systems, including substations and switchyards. It has dispatched engineers to these facilities and is providing early supply of parts and repair parts in order to bring forward the return to operation of thermal power plants currently undergoing periodic maintenance and to bring back on line some mothballed thermal plants. With these measures, Toshiba Group will contribute to the recovery of some 7,500MW of generating capacity by this summer, in TEPCO and Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc.’s service areas.

Toshiba will continue to provide all required assistance, including technical support, facility inspection, maintenance and repair, and the provision of necessary parts and components.

Information in the press releases, including product prices and specifications, content of services and contact information, is current on the date of the press announcement, but is subject to change without prior notice.